Anyone use a prepaid sim card? I cannot for the life of me get them to work (using AT&T and T-mobile). First I started out with a data only plan sim card with AT&T. It showed connected but I could not access the internet or connect to the wifi so I tried the same sim card in an AT&T hotspot and I had the same issue…so something wrong on the AT&T end that after 4 hours of being on the phone with AT&T tech support they can’t figure out.
I take my sim out of my Samsung S10 and put it in the BR1 and it works fine, great actually. So I’m thinking I need a cellular plan instead of a data plan. Go to AT&T corporate store and get a prepaid sim for cell phone, activate it, and put it in the BR1 and all it does is show “Obtaining IP Address”…I take the sim out of the BR1 and put it into my Samsung S10 and the sim card works.
Help! it makes no sense…so Pepwave products do not work with prepaid sim cards???
To give some background on why I want to use prepaid…this is going into a RV that we use from time to time but not full time. We don’t want a monthly charge for something we aren’t using. We also don’t want to use our phones as hotspots and tie them up.
So after another long call with AT&T I think we are narrowing down the issue. So the MAX BR1 mini isn’t being supported by at&t anymore. So when I set up the SIM card and used the imei number of it there were some complications. When I put the SIM card out of my S10 and it worked it’s because the S10 is a supported device so when it was in the BR1 it worked. However wehn I took the SIM card out the BR1 and put it into my phone I could text and get to the internet but the cellular part was not working properly…I couldn’t make a phone call.
I grabbed my old Samsung S8 and used the IMEI of the phone to see if I could get it working properly and of course AT&T is about to phase out the S8 from their network.
I’m going to go buy a new prepaid phone from Walmart and use that IMEI number to get the SIM card to work then put that SIM card into the BR1 and I should be good to go…at least hopefully.
I’ll keep the 3 people who seen this updated…
So I have internet now using the BR1!!! Here is what is needed (This is for T-Mobile, AT&T is anther story which I will update in a little bit). I had the Data only Pre-paid plan from T-Mobile, well that isn’t going to work, you need the cellular plan instead. So I called T-Mobile and had them switch my prepaid data plan over to prepaid cellular plan and low and behold I have internet, wifi, and gps all working now from the BR1.
Just a note – we have several pre-paid AT&T plans in use – including in Minis, as do our customers. As I write this I have three AT&T prepaid SIMs within arms’ reach – unlimited, 100gb/mo and 20gb/mo. All work well and each has been used in a Mini.
That certainly conflicts with our experience but “if it works it works!”
now if I take that sim card out and put it into the prepaid phone I bought last night I get the same issue, but with the phone when I log into my account it automatically resets and allows me full access to the internet, calling/texting, etc…but in the BR1 when I log into the wifi and go to the AT&T page it doesn’t allow me to leave the page, I cannot access the internet or anything besides the ATT page. If I take the sim card out of my current phone and use it in the pepwave I have full connectivity. So it’s coming back down to that prepaid sim card. It’s very frustrating cause I wanted to use two sim different carriers for better coverage but it looks like I can’t. I know that AT&T says the BR1 mini is not a compatible device with their network but seeing how it worked with my sim card (not the prepaid sim) I’m thinking they mean it’s not compatible with prepaid.
I guess I don’t know what to say other than AT&T has done a great job of misleading existing and potential customers. The Mini is an approved device for operation on their network. We have no experience using phone plans on data-only devices so YMMV on that.
Perhaps the Peplink Partner from whom you acquired your router can be of assistance?
I’m sending this message via a Mini LTEA (MAX-BR1-MINI-LTEA-W) using an AT&T pre-paid SIM.
For what it’s worth, I can sympathize with you. We are doing the same thing which is putting our Peplink Max BR1 MK2 in an RV and wanted the AT&T Data Only $55.00 a month 100 Gig plan and SIM card for the device. The folks at the store told us exactly what they told you - our device is not supported! I left the store, came home did tons of research and found a site that lists the AT&T Certified Devices: https://iotdevices.att.com/certified-devices.aspx Your Mini is listed there as well.
I printed it out, marched back to the store, and showed it to them. They then sent me to a Corporate store. Once I got to the Corporate store, the manage made a phone call to this number: 1-800-901-9878. Within a few minutes they had an account set up for me and gave me the SIM card for the router. Upon returning home, we put the SIM card in, waited for the status lights to turn green and we are now off and running with the AT&T Data Only plan. They did have to set us up with an AT&T phone number even though the plan is for a router and we don’t have AT&T phones.
I know I’ve said this several times on these forums so I’m sorry if I’m boring anyone but by far the easiest way to get that plan is to get your own AT&T prepaid SIM (starting with 890141) for a few dollars from Walmart or Amazon etc and then activate it here: https://www.att.com/prepaid/activations/#/activate.html
It does some sort of IMEI check on the first page. If it gets past that then I think it will work. That’s an official way to do it because there’s a link to it here under “Have your own device?” Data Only, Hotspot & Tablet Data Plans | AT&T Prepaid
Thank you, Ross! Yes, it was actually a post my wife found that you had over at RVForums that helped us to determine that our IMEI number was indeed valid and our device was supported. So thank you again for posting it! Much appreciated.
